FAD Chatter Blog

So here is a small prototype for the combination oil on digital print works which will be part of a series exploring epigenetic memory. In this case it is an oil painting of the mountains near Canberra in Australia superimposed over a Creative Commons photograph of the Churfirsten mountains in the Canton of St Gallen in Switzerland. The previous post was a digitally rendered prototype. I have been nutting out how to best seal the photographic image (which has been digitally printed onto inkjet-compatible canvas) so that the oil doesn’t leech into the canvas and so that the detail and clarity of the print isn’tRead More →

I am dependent on others for my visual references of Switzerland. I have calendars, books and the internet for my perception of it and so my experience comes second-hand through the eyes of others. So this is a prototype of my next series to do with this second-hand view of Swiss scenes borrowed from the library of others. Overlaying images of Swiss mountain scenes printed onto canvas I am painting scenes in oils of scenes I HAVE experienced; Australian scenes of mountains using colours synonymous with Australia: yellow and red ochres, gum-leaf greys and deep violet shadows from the raw, hot Australian sun.Read More →

It was meant to be a relaxing stay on Stradbroke doing sketches but the relaxing bit was the two book-ended days with a flurry of visiting of relations in the middle. Which meant not much sketching got done. So here are the sketches I did – mostly rushed pencil sketches and the second image (Ocean Rainclouds) isn’t even on the Island but on the way back at the hotel at Korora Bay. The first (Brown Lake Paperbark) was done in oil pastels – a direct and fun medium to work with. I want to do a larger version of the driftwood image but in bold contemporaryRead More →

Again, I wasn’t quite happy with this one. Straddling two stepping stones in the middle of the creek, I had 20 minutes to do this one so of course I again dived right in without planning. Luckily the composition came out ok but the colours are over the top. So hard to capture the combination of greens with the deep shadows of purply red. Apparently the human eye can discern more shades of green than other colours. Aside from that fact it is no wonder Arthur Streeton didn’t like far North Queensland. If you study his paintings, even the ones based in Sydney, the foliage is prettyRead More →

Yesterday it was a sunny day so I went down to the local creek which I had previously spotted for a potential en plain air sketch. It was pretty hard going sitting on the edge of the creek culvert with myself, my iPad or my pen threatening to slide off into the rocky creek below. But the little baby waterdragons shuttling past my feet were the cutest and made up for the discomfort, even with all my struggles of capturing the image. After an hour I wasn’t really happy with what I was producing as per above. Instead of going from shadows to highlights I dived inRead More →